Collaborating on the Federal Level: Moving beyond Mandated Consultation in the Section 106 Process

Summary

Collaboration versus Consultation—while both terms involve working with stakeholders, consultation implies a formulaic, reactionary response or product and can produce negative connotations while collaboration suggests a voluntary, shared method and a mutual goal, invoking more positive connotations. Within archaeology, collaboration is not a new practice. Yet within this post-colonial approach to conducting archaeology there is little discussion around what this looks like within the public sector. The National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act mandates a consultation procedure with a variety of stakeholders—from state and local agencies to tribal nations and community interest groups. Since consultation as mandate is based in a colonial process and has definitive legal and bureaucratic boundaries, the question arises: can we as archaeologists working in the public sector take a postcolonial approach to required consultation? If so, how? What institutional changes are needed to enable a collaborative practice rather than merely a consultation product? And with that, how does this processual change affect methodology and theory throughout the discipline and beyond? This paper looks at areas of constraint and potential spaces for moving beyond the mandate of consultation within a federal agency, specificly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• A Global Dialogue on Collaborative Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15677